a thought
absolutely overpowering to the mind; it may well seem incredible to us,
judging either from our own littleness or our own forgetfulness; so hard
as we find it to think enough of those to whom we are most nearly bound,
how can the Most High. God think of us? But if there be any one particle
of truth in Christianity, we are warranted in saying that God does love
us; strange as it may seem, He, whom neither word nor thought of created
being can compass; He, who made us and ten thousand worlds, loves each
one of us individually; "the very hairs of our heads are all numbered."
He so loved us, that he gave his only-begotten Son to die for us; and
St. Paul well asks, "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him
up for us all, will he not also with him freely give us all things?"

Believe me, you could have no better charm to keep you safe through, the
temptations of the coming half year, than this most true persuasion that
God loves you. The oldest and the youngest of us may alike repeat to
himself the blessed words, "God loves me;" "God loves me; God has
redeemed me: God would dwell in my heart, that I might dwell in him: God
has placed me in his church, has made me a member of Christ his own Son,
has made me an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven." I might multiply
words, but that one little sentence is, perhaps, more than all, "God
loves me." Oh that you would believe him when he assures you of it, for
then surely you would not fail to love him. But whether you believe it
or not, still it is so: God loves every one of us; he loves each one of
us as belonging to Christ his Son. He does love each, of us; let us not
cast his love away from us, and refuse to love him in return; he does
love each of us now, but there may be a time to each of us,--there will
be, assuredly, if we will not believe that he loves us, when he will
love us no more for ever.

LECTURE XXXVII.

* * * * *

EZEKIEL xx. 49.

_Then said I, Ah, Lord God I they say of me, Doth he not speak
parables_?

Nothing is more disheartening, if we must believe it to be true, than
the language in which some persons talk of the difficulty of the
Scriptures, and the absolute certainty that different men will ever
continue to understand them differently. It is not, we are told, with
the knowledge of Scripture as with that of outward nature: in the
knowledge of nature, discoveries are from time to time made which se